Funbalancing Queue Update?

Spoit

Yeah, honestly I was able to boostrap pretty hard, leveraging like a top 10 finish in the Juggernaut PvP to get the IM40 that was boosted in the next tournament, and then was able to pretty much skip most of the 2* progression level by 'sploiting the ridiculous environmental tile boosts (still think that the diminishing returns should be reexamined so that the 2nd tier environmental powers are actually usable more than once a month, now that it's not boosted) and the C. storm-Thor generation loop.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

And can you show me that they aren't putting in twice the effort as the guy with a bulldozer? I was rather little in the first simulator but saw that I had a chance to earn some sweet rewards so I played obsessively. In this one my team is clearly stronger and better, but I am not giving it the effort and time I did last time around and my score reflects that.

A better question would be "can you show me that they don't need to put in twice the effort as the guy with a bulldozer". Now, I don't know all the gory details how scaling is calculated, so at best I could answer that with an uneducated guess. Still, going by popular forum wisdom it's pretty safe to assume that the guy with the bulldozer gets assigned the backyard lined with steel-enforced heavy duty industry concrete while the guy with the plastic shovel gets to poke around in the sandbox, possibly with somebody pointing out where to dig so he doesn't lose interest.

Cryptobrancus wrote:

P.S. I've got mad respect for someone who has kept up this conversation for as long as we have. I may not be agreeing with you anytime soon but I have greatly enjoyed the discussion.

We might be agreeing more than you think we are. I'm really not opposed to rewarding effort, quite the contrary. However, I'm applying this to the game as a whole, not to each event as an isolated occurrence. That means if somebody already spent a lot of effort in previous events to improve his roster he should get an advantage over others who haven't spent any effort yet, not the other way around.

Unknown

I think one of the main points that I hadn't put much thought into before was addressed here.

The game has aged.

I listen to how those who have been around many more months than I have as they talk about how things worked THEN. On release day yes 1*s are the most important and people had to work their way up in progression. But I see this phenomenon time and time again in games with MMO components.

You start small, take on challenges, earn new rewards, gain strength and so on. You might occasionally run into that one guy with way more levels and insanely cool stuff and think wow I would love to work my way up to where he is at one day. Motivation.

Game ages, now you run into guys with the uber flaming swords all day every day, maybe you have one yourself, maybe only a flaming dagger or whatever you don't see that level of rewards that big a deal anymore because everyone seems to have the good stuff. Games then release a new tier of crazy challenges and rewards and the cycle continues.

MMO's seem to gain speed all the time. In the beginning takes forever to level a character, after a while the developers turn up the dial so leveling gets faster, and then it seems like you hear about a new race coming out and people have it max level in less than a week.

I do think this kind of acceleration is natural and maybe even necessary. If you were a new player and come to the forums to learn about the game and learn about all the character strengths and synergy and how best to rubberband and see all the 100+ day crowd with their impressive rosters but can't seem to get anything better than Bullseyes all day, how long would you stay around? I don't feel like I would have stayed long if my only way to get interesting covers was wait for a free one from daily rewards or pull from the RNG ad infinitum.

Unknown

Moghwyn wrote:

We might be agreeing more than you think we are. I'm really not opposed to rewarding effort, quite the contrary. However, I'm applying this to the game as a whole, not to each event as an isolated occurrence. That means if somebody already spent a lot of effort in previous events to improve his roster he should get an advantage over others who haven't spent any effort yet, not the other way around.

The big thing for me, is that at different "stages" of the game, the player wants different things. Broadly speaking, a player starting out wants lots of 2* covers, roster slots, and to not face level 100 opponents. A mid or high level player wants tons of ISO and new 3*s. And neither really wants to compete against the other. I don't see any reason why brackets, reward structures, and scaling couldn't be set up to satisfy this instead of making everything about 3* covers.

Unknown

They could create a brand new arena every month or two. So one can just join as day#1 with completion not that far ahead. Or if you don't like even that much head-start of others, join the next one as it starts and abandon the old account.

Sure it would fragment the population but is that a real problem for anything? Just tune down the community target scores in events using them.

Unknown

If I already said this in this thread, I apologize. It's pretty long and there are a lot of parallel conversations on these subjects these days.

They should take scaling out of the game and put in more permanent, progressive PvE content. If we want an avenue for people to develop their rosters, the same kind of avenue used in every other RPG ever would do a good job of it. And if, as we cynically assume, the developer goal is to give one cover of a bunch of different characters to players, that could be a guaranteed effect of PvE chapters with set rewards.

I couldn't do all the boards in the first few PvE events because my team was too weak. I did what I could, gleaned a few rewards, and went back to the Prologue afterward to scrape together new stuff. If there were a game to play outside of the events, there would be no desperate incentive to make the events playable by everyone.

Unknown

Childish move of the day, somehow related to Spiderman: I was going for the 500 spot in the Mag LR for sport (I got him maxed), when i got beaten by a very low-level Spiderman team, twice (I was around 350ish, he was at 240).

I stored the retaliation, tanked my way to the bottom of the ladder, then hit him hard. So satisfying, totally worth it. :mad_chuckle:

Nonce Equitaur 2

The funbalancing announced 3 months ago is becoming a Sword of Damocles for the game. Some of the major threads on the issue ....

Funbalancing Queue Update?
When will spiderman be nerfed
The quickest and easiest way to funbalance Spidey
Spider-Man needs to be nerfed NOW!!!!!
Funbalancing - Mags & Spidey
ETA on spidey/mags nerfs?

As can be seen in the Character Rankings, the nerfs on Ragnarok and Wolverine are widely seen as being overdone.

Funbalancing dangles by a thread over two characters. We don't know if it's a huge sword that will permanently cripple them, causing them to drop in the rankings as far as Ragnarok fell. Or if it will be a small threat that drops on them. But it's definitely an anxiety -- do we level up these two characters?

Unknown

I still don't get the idea of fear here. I definitely applied all Mags covers on hand and every levels I could afford. And enjoy using him. To the maximum while it lasts.

If he gets the Rags treatment, I'll use something else but whatever I got that far in fun and rewards can't be taken.

(Actually it applied to most Rags users too).

Unknown

Yeah, people shouldn't live in fear. I haven't done much with my Classic Mags because I've never had much luck with villain covers, but I leveled up Spider man without any hesitation even after his announced nerf...and have definitely not regretted it.

How long would you need to dominate a given PVE or PVP event to make it worth the investment? If you're talking real money, that's one thing, but if you're just holding back on a significant ISO dump I don't think there's any call for waiting.

Unknown

Magneto is well worth the investment, and you only need to invest in blue. You can technically have him a 5/0/0 and he'd still clean up a whole mess of PvP/PvE events just due to his ability to generate massive amount of APs.

Spiderman I'm less sure about. It's hard to be competitive without him, but since everyone at the high end has him too, it's not clear to me if you get much of an advantage there. I certainly wouldn't be leveling him up. PvE, based on the scaling thread, seems to be more about finding ways to trick the system. While having Spiderman on your side is pretty much the ultimate insurance against 230X3s, it looks like a lot of people manage to trick the system to keep the levels low enough so that they don't need him. For PvP, while you almost never lose a game with Spiderman, his lack of speed is actually a significant drawback in PvP where winning quickly matters a lot, sometimes more than winning cleanly.

Unknown

For PvE you don't need Spidey that high level. Probably around 90-100 so he has enough hit points to survive. Having him higher does help with healing and protect tiles, but isn't really that necessary if you can hold stun long enough.

I don't think a 141 spidey on PvP defense is much of a deterrent. I guess it depends on who he's paired with. If he manages to get a lot of blue and yellow he can be a pain to deal with, but I rarely lose against spidey teams. Protect tiles sometimes make matches troublesome, but since he has no offense on his own he's usually not a problem.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Magneto is well worth the investment, and you only need to invest in blue. You can technically have him a 5/0/0 and he'd still clean up a whole mess of PvP/PvE events just due to his ability to generate massive amount of APs.

Not in my experience. I have to use red after a few blue shots running out of blues on board.
Sure you can possibly use others' board shaking abilities but when they arrive in the same pack and for insanely low cost too?

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Magneto is well worth the investment, and you only need to invest in blue. You can technically have him a 5/0/0 and he'd still clean up a whole mess of PvP/PvE events just due to his ability to generate massive amount of APs.

Not in my experience. I have to use red after a few blue shots running out of blues on board.
Sure you can possibly use others' board shaking abilities but when they arrive in the same pack and for insanely low cost too?

I have just thrown whatever covers I get into my magneto, so he isn't specced optimally. He's 3/5/4. But I have found that he's still awesome. It's impossible to say that 5 blue is overrated, but he just doesn't have a bad power. If you pair him with a strike tile generator (which you should) you'll never be unhappy matching any of his power's colors. At first I held back from leveling him because of the announced Nerfs, but he was still good then (with strike tiles). I have since leveled him despite the nerfs, and I think it would be a good investment for anyone in the same position to level him now. If you are a patch or punisher user but don't have a Cmags, you don't know what you are missing!

Nonce Equitaur 2

For Magneto, it might be worthwhile to do a round-up of the 30 or so ways he could be nerfed without breaking him. He's gotten a lot good ideas, and the general consensus in these threads has been that no-one much cares what happens to his red, but it's useful. His Blue is awesome, and would still be awesome if it cost a bit more.

For Spiderman ....

Web Interference - Blue 6 AP
Spider-Man puts a web on a chosen location, slowing the enemy plans. He chooses and webs a basic tile, and opponent powers using that color are unusable until the webbing is removed. The webbing remains for 2 turns, then splits and remains on two random environment tiles, dissolving in a few hours.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Countdown tiles may be webbed, stopping enemy countdown tiles for the webbed color.
Level 3: Attack tiles may be webbed, nullifying enemy attack tiles for the webbed color. Webbing remains 3 rounds.
Level 4: Protect tiles may be webbed, nullifying enemy protect tiles for the webbed color.
Level 5: Strike tiles may be webbed, nullifying enemy strike tiles for the webbed colors. Webbing remains 4 rounds.

This removes Stun entirely, and allows the opponents to move, but can nullify enemy powers for awhile. Full power against Daken/Rags, webbing a red tile would prevent Thunderclap for 4 rounds. A green match would still generate red strike tiles, and they would still hurt, unless it was a red strike tile that was webbed. If a green tile was webbed, Daken would no longer make red strike tiles on a green match. If the webbed tile was cleared, they could start using their powers immediately. The webs clinging to environment tiles are used for healing.

Puritas

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

As can be seen in the Character Rankings, the nerfs on Ragnarok and Wolverine are widely seen as being overdone.

18/35 doesn't seem too bad
Besides, if you go to the more accurate rankings at http://mpqjunkie.com/rankings/ , he's at #16, right behind thor, ares, and c.storm, and right ahead of IM40
Or by overdone do you mean "no longer stronger than most ***s"?

jojeda654

Puritas wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

As can be seen in the Character Rankings, the nerfs on Ragnarok and Wolverine are widely seen as being overdone.

18/35 doesn't seem too bad
Besides, if you go to the more accurate rankings at http://mpqjunkie.com/rankings/ , he's at #16, right behind thor, ares, and c.storm, and right ahead of IM40
Or by overdone do you mean "no longer stronger than most ***s"?

I think he's basing it on how much lower their ranking is based on the last time the survey was run. Wolverine dropped 7 spots, Rag dropped 14 spots.

Hmm... that last phrase sounded gross.

Unknown

Waiting to hear what happens to Mags before I drop significant cash into him. I can't believe I'm saying that but I am ready to pull the trigger and fork out $ to level him up past my 1/1/3 build of him.

As for the aging of the game, I'd personally like to see somehow the game develop in layers of complexity as you progress from newbie to daily addict. Having so many characters is becoming a bit annoying for me personally. I guess what I'm saying is I'd like to see advances in storyline and mechanics vs. just new covers to pull.

Unknown

Please stop nerfing, stop even discussing nerfing. Just don't do it. Improve weak and underused heroes. Nerfing creates an atmosphere of fear when using your hard earned ISO-8 and cash to develop your roster. Nerfing is almost never the answer. Even the Black Panther nerf was bogus. They just didn't get a huge complaint wave because people didn't have time to invest in him. Black panther has 2 bad abilities (just compare him to Punisher's green for strike tiles or Mag's blue for shields) and one great one (black). Why nerf him??? He wasn't dominating the PVP scene, which was the excuse we heard last time on the Thorverine nerf. If you want the game to take off, you need stability, that means no nerfs. I'm about to spend money and over 100,000 iso-8 in a champ threatened with a nerf. How can I be made whole after he is ruined? What did people with a useless Ragnarock get after the nerf?

Also, make Spider-man Bag Man useful or redeem him fully covered for 50,000 iso-8. He is a bad joke and that bad joke has run its course. Enough is enough.

I love this game and I've played over 600 hours. I will continue to play, but devs need to understand that 400 of those 600 hours were spent improving just 3 heroes in my roster, 1 was already nerfed (Thor) and now one more is the threatened by nerfs. How are you going to reimburse me for 400 hours of play? If you go minimum wage, they'll should pay me 7 x 400 = 1600 dollars, way too much. How about 1 dollar an hour? That's more than I've ever spent in this game. Devs need to look at nerfing in this light. If you want to see more strategies, different teams, etc... don't nerf, improve characters that people don't use enough. You have all the usage statistics, you know that there are at least a dozen heroes that barely ever see play. Why mess with the few who are great and fun to play with?

There are so many threads on nerfing, I'm repeating my post.

Cheers,
NazgulPrime

Unknown

Wow, I thought we have a few days until April 1...